`The World Is Not Enough` ranked as 20th most expensive Hollywood movie ever made

10-Dec-2005 • Bond News

The 19th James Bond film, "The World Is Not Enough", has been ranked as the 20th most expensive film ever made in Hollywood by Forbes. "Die Another Day" (2002) came in at #24.

King Kong will grace the silver screen for a third time on Dec. 14. But rather then set the studio back an estimated $10.3 million (2005 dollars), as Merian C. Cooper's original did in 1933, the latest remake will cost more than 20-times as much. Production costs alone on Peter Jackson's version were $207 million, making it the sixth most expensive film ever made by Hollywood.

The average cost of a Hollywood film was almost $64 million in 2004, nearly double the average cost from a decade earlier, according to the Motion Picture Association of America. But many films cost much more--the 25 we feature on our list of Hollywood's Most Expensive Films averaged $182.9 million in production costs. And that average doesn't account for marketing expenses, which can easily reach nine figures for a big release.

Yet despite the high costs, most of these films were ultimately successful. Foreign box office, DVD-sales and merchandising can do wonders for a film that grosses poorly in the U.S. Among the films on our list, only The 13th Warrior, an epic 1999 flop starring Antonio Banderas, didn't report a worldwide gross that was higher than its production costs.

To determine which Hollywood flicks had the biggest budgets of all, we turned to www.boxofficemojo.com. The Burbank, Calif.-based online box-office tracker provided us with production budget estimates. Unfortunately, reported marketing budgets are far less reliable, which forced us to exclude these figures altogether.

1. Cleopatra (1963) $286.4 million
2. Titanic (1997) $247.0 million
3. Waterworld (1995) $229.0 million
4. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003) $216.6 million
5. Spider-Man 2 (2004) $210.0 million
6. Wild Wild West (1999) $203.8 million
7. Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997) $198.8 million
8. The 13th Warrior (1999) $190.7 million
9. Troy (2004) $184.3 million
10. The Polar Express (2004) $172.1 million
11. Armageddon (1998) $171.1 million
12. Lethal Weapon 4 (1998) $170.9 million
13. Van Helsing (2004) $168.5 million
14. Superman (1978) $168.0 million
15. The Matrix Reloaded (2003) $162.8 million
16--. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003) $162.0 million
16--. The Matrix Revolutions (2003) $162.0 million
18. The Perfect Storm (2000) $161.8 million
19. Alexander (2004) $161.6 million
20. The World Is Not Enough (1999) $159.8 million
21. Godzilla (1998) $159.1 million
22. Stuart Little (1999) $157.4 million
23. Pearl Harbor (2001) $156.9 million
24. Die Another Day (2002) $156.0 million
25. Tarzan (1999) $155.8 million

All figures included are in 2005 dollars.